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Jordan Tomnuk, Tomnuk Design
things got rolling right away,” he recalls. Pure’s modern home
furnishings were sold around the world. At their peak, they
had 40 employees and nearly 10,000 square feet of shop space.
“I don’t know any designers in Toronto or Vancouver that have
a 4,000-square-foot shop. It’s just impossible,” Lilge told me. “It’s
possible here in Edmonton.”
Lilge left Pure Design in 2002, but returned to furniture
design 15 years later with Division Twelve, focusing on upmarket
steel-frame furnishings for the hospitality industry. Inspired
in part by his partner’s work in the restaurant industry, Lilge
recognized an unfulfilled need for well-built, durable, contem-
porary seating for the hospitality market. He succeeded because
his designs were solving an existing problem.
Space, once more, became an essential factor in the company’s
success. From a vacant, fire-damaged metal tube chair factory,
Division Twelve was able to design and manufacture its signature
steel-frame furniture until it was acquired by Canadian furniture
company Keilhauer in 2019. (The company moved manufacturing
to Ontario.)
But designers need more than space for continued success and
growth. They need a market for their products, and for contem-
porary furniture Edmonton’s market remains relatively small.
For Lilge, this meant specifically targeting eastern and American
markets, a strategy that has proved successful (Lilge’s designs
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have been sold in the United States, the U.K. and Japan) but one
that comes with other challenges.
“It’s a full day to travel to the east coast,” says Lilge. That
means taking meetings and delivering products to market takes
more time and money than it would for designers working
within those communities.
Shane Pawluk, co-founder of Izm, echoed this frustration.
Pawluk and his business partner, Jerad Mack have been in business
since 2002, winning numerous awards for their high-end furniture.
While maintaining their signature modern style, the pair have
weathered the fluctuating market by evolving their offerings:
most recently, they’ve had success building wooden loft ladders.
Yet they’ve struggled to crack the wider Alberta market. It’s not
that Albertans don’t spend the money, according to Pawluk, it’s
that the focus here is on outward-facing goods — luxury cars
and trucks, houses, landscaping.
Most of Izm’s business comes from the United States, and
while foreign sales have sustained the company now for over 20
years, they’ve seen countless peers disappear from Edmonton
because of a lack of exposure.
In a sense, local designers face a classic supply and demand
problem. On the supply side, Edmonton has excellent design
schools, an entrepreneurial spirit and a low-competition
environment — especially compared to saturated markets like
Toronto. What’s more, the city’s cost of living is relatively low
and industrial space is affordable.
But when it comes to demand, well, it’s just not there yet.
And that has created a series of boom-and-bust cycles in
the design community. New people arrive on the scene, gain
some traction and buzz, then disappear. Some of this churn is
inevitable — a part of any business. But when a community
becomes too thin, it can limit opportunities for the next gener-
ation of graduates. Just as critical, it can limit opportunities for
mentorship and knowledge sharing.
KALIE JOHNSTON IS A FASHION DESIGNER AND THE
director of product design at Poppy Barley, a locally founded
company with international reach. Before returning to Edmonton,
she studied at Toronto Metropolitan University and worked at
Joe Fresh, building her career in the heart of Canada’s fashion
industry. She and her partner moved back west for better
opportunities in 2012, but while Johnston has been able to grow
professionally in Edmonton, she says the tradeoff is a lack of
senior fashion designers to learn from. “Who leads me to be
better?” she asks. “Who mentors me? Who helps me be a better
designer? Who helps me be a better design leader?”
The answer to her questions may depend on whether
Edmonton can draw more talent to the city and convince more
of its homegrown talent to stay. In spite of its fertile ground,
it’s still a place many creatives — not just in the design field —
tend to leave for the seemingly greener pastures of larger urban
centres. But that is starting to change, says Kazakoff. Cities like
Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal can no longer promise the
prospects of a longer and more lucrative career as they become
too expensive for most young designers — for most people, really.
In comparison, the affordability of Edmonton could become a
kind of gravity attracting new talents and keeping homegrown
talent from floating off.